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Friday, 20 August 2010

Thoughts on: 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane

I had been dreading reading this one. Drama? Gag me. (And yet ironically I have somehow ended up friendly with a lot of people who LOVE drama. Weird.) And then weird, freaky, shock you to your senses until you fall out of your socks kind of drama? Double gag me. But Sarah Kane is fortunate that I was being made to read her book for uni, because I actually really enjoyed it.

I don't know if you remember, but I read the Monkey's Mask for Australian Literature and Film last semester, and I really liked that. It was great because it was so precise, all these pretty images/ not so pleasant ideas were put forth in a lovely, concise, understandable way, and I was able to just read and read and read... 4.48 Psychosis was like that. I'm definitely going to need another read of it to get my head around some of the core ideas but as a work of art, it just really spoke to me. My interpretation is probably wrong, mind you. But what I got from it was a sad, lost, lonely person searching and searching for themself/ someone to love and to love them back/ absolution etc and instead finding disappointment at every turn, someone who was told they were crazy because they couldn't just be happy, and someone who was plonked in front of a psychologist who didn't quite get that they were talking to a person and not doing a case study. I love the way that it's the disenchantment with the confidante/ psychologist that is the real trigger for conflict, as usually they are characters who are simply vessels for moving the story along.

But this is a play... and I have no idea how it would be performed... hmmm.